


Panton Street

by missdibley



Series: 38 Lifetimes [9]
Category: British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Drabble, Existing Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, Former Lovers - Freeform, Old Love, Snow Globe, harold pinter theatre, old loves, panton street, red nose diaries, the red nose diaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 02:15:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18001871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdibley/pseuds/missdibley
Summary: On opening night, Tom receives an unexpected gift from an old friend.





	Panton Street

**Author's Note:**

> You may want to read an old story, ["The Wave"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260727), before you proceed.

Zawe had draped herself along the edge of Tom’s dressing table, breathless and assured after a successful opening night. She looked ravishing, and Tom would have been happy to take her there except there were people outside demanding his time and attention. Their time and attention, he supposed, though “their” and “they” and “we” and “us” were not pronouns he was accustomed to using for himself and for her.

Even if it had been a few months since whatever this was had begun. There are only so many bright young things circulating, young successful cultured women who were brilliant on paper and lovely in person. Tom wouldn’t say it was Zawe’s turn or her time but… he wasn’t getting any younger. She was younger, but just enough. She played down her celebrated ancestors and elevated her contemporaries. She was statuesque. It was almost pointless to say how beautiful she was. Namely because it was obvious. Also because it didn’t capture how kind she was. Smart. Ambitious. Confident. Talented. She was just right.

He kissed her, gently on the cheekbone, and followed it up with a playful nip at her elegant jawbone. Retreating to her dressing room, she winked at his reflection in the mirror and reminded him that the first drink at the after party was on him. Tom shut the door behind her, took a seat, and considered his face in the mirror.

He looked like himself. Very little had been required to effect his transformation. He rubbed his beard, avoiding the bare cheeks as he didn’t want to get makeup all over his fingers. He should have been reaching for the packet of makeup removing wipes but out of the corner his eye he saw the flowers. Arranged in rows, at the far end of the dressing table, all bearing cards and labels from the city’s finest and hippest florists.

The dark red they were almost black calla lilies were from Ben and Sophie. A pot of violets from his mother, sent from her own greenhouse, and destined to be resettled into a sunny corner of his own back garden. Roses and ranunculi, gladioli and even a rather awkward succulent.

And then a flash of light. Something artificial, not natural in the green. Tom pushed aside a few vases and there it was. A round and shiny thing, glass perhaps, wrapped in filmy gauzy fabric that looked gold. It was tied up, rather like a dumpling, with a deep blue silk ribbon. When Tom undid the ribbon, the fabric fell open to reveal a snow globe.

And all of a sudden Tom felt cold. There was an ache in his heart, and so his right hand flew up to that spot on his chest. Soothing the spot, trying to ease his heartbeat. He took a few deep breaths, then reached for the globe.

It was a tiny thing. Gold flakes of glitter settled on the floor of what appeared to be a Venetian scene. A stylized lion a gondola a covered bridge all decorated with harlequin masks. The dome of the thing was perfectly round, set on a plaster base carved and decorated with little striped pilings. VENEZIA rendered in bright red. Tom felt something underneath, and flipped it over.

A calling card, embossed with the initials “C. P. D.” in gold. Tom flipped it over and gasped. He would recognize her handwriting anywhere.

_Give ‘em hell._

Tom set the card down, only so he could retrieve his wallet and from within its folds pluck the card’s twin. Sent September 2017. It wasn’t nearly as stiff, soft and careworn. It had come tucked into a basket of bluebells.

_Break a leg._

Almost three years since they last spoke, and this was the extent of their communication. Or rather, the extent of their exchanged communication. There had been the flurry of texts from him after that last phone call in June 2016. Emails. A few letters. But nothing from her.

Just a card in the fall of 2017, and now this.

He would call just to listen to the greeting of her voicemail box. Because she never answered the phone to him. Why would she? But then she never changed her number, either. Why would she? It wasn’t her fault that he…. that Tom was…

Tom’s phone buzzed with a text: _where r u - calling uber soon_

His thumb swept over the surface of his phone but did not swipe to engage and reply. Instead of replying to his current paramour, he searched his phone for his lost love.

There were their messages, which he refused to read but could not bring himself to delete. Found their pictures, which he had long ago stopped looking at but could not bring himself to archive in the depths of his Macbook’s hard drive.

He had meant to attempt a text, though his last text sent 18 months ago had gone unanswered, but instead his thumb pressed tiny video call icon.

And Tom knew she wouldn’t pick up so why should he bother ending it. Why shouldn’t he let it ring, or whatever it was that video calls did?

So he let it. He sat there, studied the card instead of his face in the mirror. Forgot about the makeup on his face, that was beginning to cake. For the first time in a long while, Tom didn’t feel his age. He didn’t feel, or could perhaps bear better the weight of thirty eight years.

He was tired but weirdly ecstatic not because he was dating his lovely co-star in the play that was going to sell out but because the woman whose heart he broke almost three years ago sent him an ugly snow globe that probably cost her two pounds at the airport and…

“Hello?”

At the sound of her voice, Tom dropped the card on the floor. Before he scrambled to retrieve it, awkward from his still seated position, he picked up his phone, took a deep breath, and got a good look at the face that he still missed, and still loved.

“Carmen,” he murmured. “I got your gift.”


End file.
